From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 3 23:43:32 2001
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Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 02:00:38 -0400
From: Omar Thameen
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: auto-responders and reply-to field
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I just know it's true, but where does it say that auto-responders (e.g.,
vacation programs) must reply to the envelope from and certainly NOT to
the address in the reply-to field?
I can't find the language I'm looking for, and I've looked through RFCs
821, 822, 1891, and some others.
Omar
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 4 06:36:44 2001
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Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2001 09:27:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: James M Galvin
Subject: Re: auto-responders and reply-to field
In-reply-to: <20010804020038.B28107@clifford.inch.com>
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From: Omar Thameen
I just know it's true, but where does it say that auto-responders (e.g.,
vacation programs) must reply to the envelope from and certainly NOT to
the address in the reply-to field?
You can not find the language because it does not exist. There is no
official standard for the behavior of vacation programs.
There are two widely held positions (and there are others, which is why
there is no official standard yet).
One is the Berkeley vacation program, which would only respond to the
message From: header if the recipient was actually listed in the message
To: or Cc: header. This fails for lists that put the actual recipient
in the message headers and then set the message Reply-To: header to the
list, unless the user remembers to pre-list the mailing lists.
The other is to follow the path of the Delivery Status Notification
(DSN) and Message Delivery Notification (MDN) standards, which both
specify the use of the envelope from for their purposes.
If you check the archives you'll find there was a discussion of this not
too long ago, i.e., this year.
Jim
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 4 10:36:45 2001
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Message-ID:
From: "John R Levine"
To: "list-managers@GreatCircle.COM"
Subject: Re: auto-responders and reply-to field
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> There are two widely held positions (and there are others, which is why
> there is no official standard yet).
>
> One is the Berkeley vacation program, which would only respond to the
> message From: header if the recipient was actually listed in the message
> To: or Cc: header. This fails for lists that put the actual recipient
> in the message headers and then set the message Reply-To: header to the
> list, unless the user remembers to pre-list the mailing lists.
It shouldn't, if the list puts Precedence: Bulk or other standard hints in
the header to show that it's a mailing list.
> The other is to follow the path of the Delivery Status Notification
> (DSN) and Message Delivery Notification (MDN) standards, which both
> specify the use of the envelope from for their purposes.
Wow, is that broken. But I won't start up this argument again other than
to note that whenever I see a vacation notice in response to a message on
one of my lists I immediately remove the perpetrator from the list and so
do all of the other list admins I know.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 4 20:51:49 2001
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Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 23:20:08 -0400
From: Omar Thameen
To: James M Galvin
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: auto-responders and reply-to field
References: <20010804020038.B28107@clifford.inch.com>
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In-Reply-To: ; from James M Galvin on Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 09:27:01AM -0400
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On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 09:27:01AM -0400, James M Galvin wrote:
> From: Omar Thameen
>
> I just know it's true, but where does it say that auto-responders (e.g.,
> vacation programs) must reply to the envelope from and certainly NOT to
> the address in the reply-to field?
>
> You can not find the language because it does not exist. There is no
> official standard for the behavior of vacation programs.
Thanks for the clarification and the summary.
> If you check the archives you'll find there was a discussion of this not
> too long ago, i.e., this year.
You're right - I forgot about that. To make matters difficult, I had
found previously that greatcircle.com does not have searchable archives
of the list-managers list, and they prevent search engines from indexing
via their robots.txt. For others' reference, I did find a searchable
archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/list-managers@greatcircle.com/ ,
and this is also externally indexed (at least by Google).
Omar
From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 9 10:47:30 2001
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From: "Steve Werby"
To:
References: <20010804020038.B28107@clifford.inch.com> <20010804232008.A6180@clifford.inch.com>
Subject: Re: auto-responders and reply-to field
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 13:36:28 -0400
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"Omar Thameen" wrote:
> > If you check the archives you'll find there was a discussion of this not
> > too long ago, i.e., this year.
>
> You're right - I forgot about that. To make matters difficult, I had
> found previously that greatcircle.com does not have searchable archives
> of the list-managers list, and they prevent search engines from indexing
> via their robots.txt.
A minor note - robots.txt doesn't prevent search engines from indexing
pages. It just suggests that they don't. No one is forced to respect what
robots.txt says. That's probably what you meant, but I just wanted to
clarify for those that aren't too familiar with robots.txt.
--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 12 12:18:13 2001
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 12:16:15 -0700
From: Michelle Dick
Message-Id: <20010812191615.58F6C7C69@yellow.rahul.net>
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I know that many folks still run plain text only mailing lists. I do.
I refer my subscribers to:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1236/nomime.html
for help on sending plain text. With the huge hassle that AOL makes
subscribers go through in 6.0 to send plain text, several of my AOL
subscribers have requested a way to verify that they are sending plain
text.
I would love to have a service that allowed someone to send email to
an address, and have it reply back with a message saying whether it
was a plain text message or not (easier part) and a temporary URL
which presents the message in raw form so the person can see what
their message looks like to non-html mailers (harder part).
Any such beast exist? Anyone want to write one? I might, if I can't
convince someone else to. :-)
--
Michelle Dick
artemis@rahul.net
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 12 15:33:14 2001
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Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 18:09:55 -0400
To: Michelle Dick , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Charlie Summers
Subject: Re:wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
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At 3:16 PM -0400 8/12/01, Michelle Dick is rumored to have typed:
> Any such beast exist? Anyone want to write one? I might, if I can't
> convince someone else to. :-)
That should be really simple to do in procmail; use formail to extract the
Content-Type: header field out of the message header, and send it back to the
original sender. Wouldn't even need to shell out to anything, I'd think,
unless you were determined to cat some text explaining the difference. Of
course, none of this means anything, since they will send a text test message
and receive verification, then proceed to send mail to your list changing the
font, size, style, and add other attributes that will change their message to
multipart/alternative or text/html anyway - and then, of course, blame you
since your server must be wrong...
My subscribers get immediate feedback; if their email to any of the lists
is accepted, they're sending plain text. If it's rejected with a verbose
explaination of the problem, they ain't. ;)
Charlie
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 12 17:18:15 2001
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To: , "Michelle Dick"
References: <20010812191615.58F6C7C69@yellow.rahul.net>
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 19:08:24 -0500
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Michelle asked,
| I would love to have a service that allowed someone to send email to
| an address, and have it reply back with a message saying whether it
| was a plain text message or not (easier part) and a temporary URL
| which presents the message in raw form so the person can see what
| their message looks like to non-html mailers (harder part).
It would be fairly easy to set up an autoresponder in procmail that extracts
any header lines beginning "Content-" or "MIME-", indents the entire body by
one space to prevent MIME-interpretation of the separators and the parts'
inner headers when it gets back to the tester, and changes the inequality
signs to, say, braces to prevent HTML-rendering when it gets back to the
tester. I'd offer to do it if I had the authority anywhere to run up the
bandwidth and to create local addresses that don't begin with my username.
The autoresponder wouldn't have to guess whether the message is plain text
or not; it would simply show the tester how it would look in a plain-text
MUA. And it wouldn't be much harder instead to generate a name for a URL,
store it there with "

" and "

" around it (not all browsers, I'm
told, honor a ".txt" extension as such), return the URL and the expiration
date to the tester, and have a cron job remove any that are not to be
available any longer.
Hmm. I suppose that if there are no Content-anything or MIME-anything
headers and no left-side angle brackets, the autoresponder could say simply,
"Yes, your message is in plain text." Maybe not, though; who knows what
awful encoding will show up in email next? Better to let them see for
themselves.
However, there still is the concern Charlie brought up that people will do
it right in their test messages and then do it wrong a moment later when
they post. I was thinking that one way to get around that is to recommend
that they carbon or blind-carbon the testing address on their submissions.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 03:37:12 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 06:24:58 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Message-ID: <818892062.997683898@[192.168.1.100]>
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A web-based email checking tool would be really interesting for advanced
mail users (or people who'd like to be advanced), but useless for most
members at most lists.
Rather than make people jump through hoops at all, I recommend running your
incoming list mail through demime. Solves a multitude of annoyances, not
just AOL but bogus "winmail.dat" attachments, etc.
Demime is available via this search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=demime
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 09:07:12 2001
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<200108130800.BAA01032@honor.greatcircle.com>
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 11:51:14 -0400
To: Tom Neff , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Charlie Summers
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 6:24 AM -0400 8/13/01, Tom Neff is rumored to have typed:
> Rather than make people jump through hoops at all, I recommend running your
> incoming list mail through demime. Solves a multitude of annoyances, not
> just AOL but bogus "winmail.dat" attachments, etc.
This may eventually be necessary, but right now I see no reason to waste a
bunch of bloated perl processes on every inbound mail when users can still
send plain text (albiet with difficulty from certain brain-damaged systems).
I have solved the "multitude of annoyances" to which you refer by simply
rejecting mail not of type text/plain with a canned, (hopefully) helpful
description of the problem and solutions.
I may eventually be forced to use something like this (and hopefully find
the time, or find it's already been rewritten in more efficient C code), but
I am not yet ready to give into the idea that HTML-mail is inevitable, and I
have to waste my resources to fix it. (Can you tell I don't much like the
idea of running a huge perl instance for every email I get? This might also
explain why I won't use majordomo.)
Bad enough the idiots at AOL try to relay through my machine every couple
of days instead of being reasonable and limiting it to once a month.
Charlie
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 11:08:07 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 13:53:03 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: Charlie Summers , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Message-ID: <2168916031.997710783@t283742ghzz>
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--On Monday, August 13, 2001 11:51 AM -0400 Charlie Summers
wrote:
> At 6:24 AM -0400 8/13/01, Tom Neff is rumored to have typed:
>> Rather than make people jump through hoops at all, I recommend running
>> your incoming list mail through demime. Solves a multitude of
>> annoyances, not just AOL but bogus "winmail.dat" attachments, etc.
>
> This may eventually be necessary, but right now I see no reason to
> waste a bunch of bloated perl processes on every inbound mail when users
> can still send plain text (albiet with difficulty from certain
> brain-damaged systems).
I have not found demime to be terribly inefficient, and it does not cost a
"bunch of... perl processes on every inbound mail," just one Perl process
per inbound mail. You can easily use Procmail or something similar to
route only the messages that need it into demime.
Alternatively, you can install the non-text-plain bounce filter as
described, but route the bounces through demime, again only invoking it
where needed.
I can tell you this, once it's installed, you simply forget about that
otherwise annoying problem for the list in question.
> I may eventually be forced to use something like this (and hopefully
> find the time, or find it's already been rewritten in more efficient C
> code), but I am not yet ready to give into the idea that HTML-mail is
> inevitable, and I have to waste my resources to fix it. (Can you tell I
> don't much like the idea of running a huge perl instance for every email
> I get? This might also explain why I won't use majordomo.)
You can also hack demime into a coprocess that loads Perl just once. Or
code it in C, or what have you, but I'm sorry, HTML mail is here to stay.
Some of us can rail against the tide if we want, but others of us just want
to get on with running our lists.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 13:07:14 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:47:34 -0400
To: Tom Neff , Charlie Summers ,
List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Charlie Summers
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 1:53 PM -0400 8/13/01, Tom Neff is rumored to have typed:
> just one Perl process
> per inbound mail.
With bunches of inbound mail, there are bunches of perl processes, QED.
Which, I maintain, are inefficient and at this time unnecessary. If a poster
is not interested in posting plain text, my list doesn't run the post.
Simple, really.
> Alternatively, you can install the non-text-plain bounce filter as
> described, but route the bounces through demime, again only invoking it
> where needed.
I could, but then as people figured out that they didn't have to post
text, and that I would do the work for them, they would rely on it, and I
would end up inevitably invoking it for every message, anyway. Hardly
sensible if mny goal is not to invoke perl at all, eh? No, thank you, I will
continue to expect my posters to follow a couple of simple rules; no swearing
(family-level lists), no quoting entire digest issues, post in plain text,
you get the idea.
> I can tell you this, once it's installed, you simply forget about that
> otherwise annoying problem for the list in question.
I _have_ already forgotten about that "otherwise annoying problem," after
writing the bounce explaination I haven't worried about it one whit (please
recall that it was Ms. Dick who wondered about a plain-text test, not me, and
indeed I gently argued _against_ it since users would certainly screw it up
anyway were such a thing written). This costs me no perl processes at all,
with the added bonus that most of those people who can't (or won't) figure
out how to send text are also those who would be caught by the
once-unnecessary over-quote filters when posting their top-quoted, "Me, too!"
messages anyway. I choose not to lower the discussion level of my lists; I
certainly do NOT recommend that for anyone more interested in quantity than
quality. (So far, on my largest list, I have had one person unsubscribe in a
huff because I wouldn't accept his ransome notes. Frankly, neither I nor the
list have missed his perls of wisdom.)
> Some of us can rail against the tide if we want,
I'm sorry...did I "rail" against anything, other than invoking perl when
it simply isn't necessary? Ok, ok, maybe about AOL performing too-frequent
relay checks on my server, but then I'm kinda ticked off at WebTV for the
same thing. (Hey, I use perl for a lot of things, when it's the correct tool
for the job, or I'm _really_ lazy and it's a once-and-done. I just accept
that it takes up a whole lot of resources, and choose not to waste the
memory, cycles, et al on all of the email coming into my lists.)
> but others of us just want
> to get on with running our lists.
Which is exactly what I have done. I have simply chosen a different, less
processor-intensive, more poster-intensive, route than you have. Hey, I know
a lot of people who like majordomo, but I certainly wouldn't use it - just
different tastes. I'm _not_ trying to convince you otherwise, please enjoy
using demime...I would simply suggest you not try to convince me that demime
is yet a necessary evil, either, and allow me to suggest that alternative
point of view to other list managers/moderators.
Charlie
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 13:52:14 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 13:37:12 -0700
From: Bob Myers
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> Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 12:16:15 -0700
> From: Michelle Dick
> Subject: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
>
> I know that many folks still run plain text only mailing lists. I do.
> I refer my subscribers to:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1236/nomime.html
>
> for help on sending plain text. With the huge hassle that AOL makes
> subscribers go through in 6.0 to send plain text, several of my AOL
> subscribers have requested a way to verify that they are sending plain
> text.
What I like even better is "demime" - it's a filter that, among other
things, converts HTML or rich text to plain text, and strips binary
attachments like images and email worms ("viruses").
If your mailing list system can have a filter on incoming messages, this
works really well - no more worries about what users are sending, since
it all gets converted to plain text.
You can get demime here: http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html
I know many of you may not be able to use demime, but if you can, it's
really great.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 14:07:14 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 13:52:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Roger B.A. Klorese"
To: Charlie Summers
Cc: Tom Neff ,
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
In-Reply-To:
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On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Charlie Summers wrote:
> With bunches of inbound mail, there are bunches of perl processes, QED.
> Which, I maintain, are inefficient and at this time unnecessary. If a poster
> is not interested in posting plain text, my list doesn't run the post.
> Simple, really.
It must be nice to have a list or topic where you can do this. This would
mean disenfranchising about 15,000 subscribers from my site. Posting
plain text from AOL 6 is so damn near impossible for the typical user that
they would simply go elsewhere. Not an option for us.
--
ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG
PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114
"Go without hate. But not without rage. Heal the world." -- Paul Monette
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 14:22:15 2001
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Message-ID:
From: "John R Levine"
To: "Charlie Summers"
Cc: "List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM"
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
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> > just one Perl process per inbound mail.
>
> With bunches of inbound mail, there are bunches of perl processes, QED.
Yes indeed. I have lots of lists, the perl processes are imperceptible
because on a list of any size, delivery time dominates.
> I could, but then as people figured out that they didn't have to post
> text, and that I would do the work for them, they would rely on it, and I
> would end up inevitably invoking it for every message, anyway. Hardly
> sensible if mny goal is not to invoke perl at all, eh?
Ah, there's the problem. My goal is to deliver the mail with minimal
hassle to both list users and to me. No wonder people disagree with you.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 14:41:44 2001
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
In-reply-to: <003401c1238d$3cdd9500$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 14:17:12 -0700
From: Michelle Dick
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"David W. Tamkin" wrote:
> Michelle asked,
>
> | I would love to have a service that allowed someone to send email to
> | an address, and have it reply back with a message saying whether it
> | was a plain text message or not (easier part) and a temporary URL
> | which presents the message in raw form so the person can see what
> | their message looks like to non-html mailers (harder part).
>
> It would be fairly easy to set up an autoresponder in procmail that extracts
> any header lines beginning "Content-" or "MIME-", indents the entire body by
> one space to prevent MIME-interpretation of the separators and the parts'
> inner headers when it gets back to the tester, and changes the inequality
> signs to, say, braces to prevent HTML-rendering when it gets back to the
> tester.
Good idea. That may be enough.
> However, there still is the concern Charlie brought up that people will do
> it right in their test messages and then do it wrong a moment later when
> they post. I was thinking that one way to get around that is to recommend
> that they carbon or blind-carbon the testing address on their submissions.
Possibly. The reason I asked is that I have two AOL 6.0 subscribers
who are making a good faith effort to figure out how to send
plain text. They asked if there was a way they could test it out and
see the result (delays in the mailing list make sending a posting and
seeing if it gets through not a good way).
I do bounce non plain text mail back with an explanation already. So,
if they forget to send plain text, they can fix it once they've
figured out how to do it successfully.
I did look into demime in the past, can't recall why I didn't use it
(maybe my perl is too old on the mailing list server?). I will take
another look. But, I plan to switch to Mailman in the near future and
while I see there is demime patch, there is not one for the latest
version of Mailman (or wasn't when I checked). I don't know python
yet. In my case, I am not at all cpu-limited on the mailing list
server, far from it.
--
Michelle Dick
artemis@rahul.net
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 15:08:08 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 17:51:28 -0400
To: "John R Levine" ,
"Roger B.A. Klorese"
From: Charlie Summers
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
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At 5:03 PM -0400 8/13/01, John R Levine is rumored to have typed:
> No wonder people disagree with you.
Indeed; healthy, isn't it? I mean, at least when the opposing arguments
are intelligent ones.
I wasted time this afternoon carefully composed a point-by-point rebuttal,
but the truth is, I'm already weary of this since my goal was never to
convince those who have already decided what they will do and expect everyone
else to do the same thing, but rather show those who _haven't_ yet made up
their mind that there are other options; and I have hopefully already
succeeded there.
I only note that the only people who are _always_ demonstratably wrong are
those who maintain there is only one valid way to do anything. And the only
people who are _always_ worthy of being ignored are those who demand that
_other_ people accept that there is only one valid way of doing anything.
I will make no additional comment on this subject and allow all of you who
believe using demime is the only solution for everyone to have the last
word(s).
Charlie
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 16:07:15 2001
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To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
In-reply-to:
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:51:10 -0700
From: Michelle Dick
Message-Id: <20010813225110.765AE7C07@yellow.rahul.net>
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Charlie Summers wrote:
>
> I will make no additional comment on this subject and allow all
> of you who believe using demime is the only solution for everyone to
> have the last word(s).
FWIW, I'm the original poster and none of the respondents came across
to me as believing that demime is the only solution.
As it turns out, having "old perl" is the reason I didn't install
demime previously. I just tried again -- and my perl's cpan
interactive install fails terribly on the packages needed. It looks
like demime falls in the category of "major hassle" for me right now
-- which means getting demime on my list violates John's goal of "to
deliver the mail with minimal hassle to both list users and to me."
I have a new replacement server in process, but it's a ways off from
being deployed (a wholesale restructure: new network, new MTA, new
MLM, everything). I may try to upgrade my existing perl, but this is
an oooold system (in internet terms: current server in service since
1995) and I'd probably end up having to upgrade gcc just to do
that. So, it'll depend on my having time, and just how long off the
new server is.
And Roger is correct that it is nice to have a mailing list where the
goal isn't to be as inclusive as possible. I don't run my list
democraticly or by consensus and this also has advantages and
conveniences. I'm not after the greatest number of subscribers. I
get to choose how much hand-holding is appropriate for my list.
Running inclusive, and especially consensus-based, mailing lists can be
a royal pain -- I'm glad other people do it. :-)
Technical restrictions can raise the quality of list discussion. They
can also exclude people who might otherwise be valuable
contributors. I think most of us recognize both sides of this issue
and acknowledge that the best balance differs from list to list.
If I hadn't known about demime, I would have been grateful to
hear of it. There may be other list managers on the list who are
learning of it for the first time and can use it.
--
Michelle Dick
artemis@rahul.net
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 16:52:16 2001
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 19:47:05 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: Charlie Summers , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Message-ID: <17632031.997732025@t283742ghzz>
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--On Monday, August 13, 2001 3:47 PM -0400 Charlie Summers
wrote:
> At 1:53 PM -0400 8/13/01, Tom Neff is rumored to have typed:
>
>> just one Perl process
>> per inbound mail.
>
> With bunches of inbound mail, there are bunches of perl processes, QED.
It's not really "QED" because I was specifically addressing Charlie's
earlier statement:
> ...right now I see no reason to waste a
> bunch of bloated perl processes on every inbound mail
by pointing out that there is not a "bunch of ... processes" on every
inbound mail, but generally only one process per inbound mail. If you have
a lot of inbound messages (at least a lot of inbound HTML messages) you
will still have that many processes (unless you hack the coprocessor
daemon, as I also suggested in a sentence Charlie didn't quote), but not as
many as you'd have if there really were a "bunch" of processes per message.
> Which, I maintain, are inefficient and at this time unnecessary. If a
> poster is not interested in posting plain text, my list doesn't run the
> post. Simple, really.
It's simple all right, but in a GENERAL world of topic-oriented mailing
lists whose earthly priorities lie somewhere other than the geek virtuosity
of their members, it can interfere with the list's mission. Suppose we
start a list to organize a big family reunion somewhere in 2002 - the
members drawn from relatives and loved ones young and old across the
country and maybe the world. Someone finally gets Great-Grandma, who
hasn't seen some of the kids in many years, an email account and she posts
her tentative, courtly, affectionate howdy and asks someone to bring a
quilt for the big old pine table. Not only would one have to be a
heartless S.O.B. to reject her posting with some smartass RTFM lingo or
essay-length techie workaround hoop she's supposed to jump through, it'd be
just plain dumb.
Similarly, a large popular list on some cultural topic, with hundreds or
thousands of members, has a dilemma. Does it perpetually expend 5-10% of
its management energy browbeating the ever-changing membership into
"playing computer" and hand-enforcing filetype correctness? Or does it
just take the plain text from all submissions and distribute it
automatically?
I think a list whose topic matter implicitly implies email technical savvy
(like this one?) has every right to ask that its posters master a filetype
convention. Most other lists would strike me as being better off without
such a requirement.
>> Alternatively, you can install the non-text-plain bounce filter as
>> described, but route the bounces through demime, again only invoking it
>> where needed.
>
> I could, but then as people figured out that they didn't have to post
> text, and that I would do the work for them, they would rely on it, and I
> would end up inevitably invoking it for every message, anyway. Hardly
> sensible if mny goal is not to invoke perl at all, eh?
I guess not -- presuming that "not to invoke perl" is itself a sensible
primary goal for a list manager. Barring unusual hosting circumstances, I
would again say this is a skewed priority, but to each her/his own.
>> but others of us just want
>> to get on with running our lists.
>
> Which is exactly what I have done. I have simply chosen a different,
> less processor-intensive, more poster-intensive, route than you have.
> Hey, I know a lot of people who like majordomo, but I certainly wouldn't
> use it - just different tastes. I'm _not_ trying to convince you
> otherwise, please enjoy using demime...I would simply suggest you not try
> to convince me that demime is yet a necessary evil, either, and allow me
> to suggest that alternative point of view to other list
> managers/moderators.
I am unaware of any mechanism that would prevent Charlie from suggesting
various things, as he has just done. The point I wish to make is that IN
GENERAL, "less processor-intensive, more poster-intensive" is not the very
best service a list manager can perform. I view us as being here to
facilitate, not to chivvy and/or banish people who have come to us to
discuss things they love. When I am given an automated tool that makes
this easier, I tend to embrace it, and to pass the word on to others when
appropriate. It doesn't really matter to me whether Charlie in particular
changes his mind - these postings are intended for, and read by, the whole
community, which then decides severally for itself what's best to do.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 17:37:31 2001
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Message-ID: <004601c12457$8ba0a400$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References:
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 19:20:59 -0500
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Mark the date. I'm not only siding with Charlie, I'm going farther than he
did. He wrote, addressing Tom,
S> I have simply chosen a different, less
S> processor-intensive, more poster-intensive, route than you have.
Unless the poster is on a setup (such as AOL 6.0) that pushes HTML mail onto
customers with all the selections preset, I've found that plain text is
*less* poster-intensive. The writer doesn't have to pick out stationery,
typefaces, colors, borders, type sizes, emphasis styles, and all those other
things that would leave me scratching my head for what to choose if I
couldn't send plain text.
Michelle has followed up,
D> The reason I asked is that I have two AOL 6.0 subscribers
D> who are making a good faith effort to figure out how to send
D> plain text.
If it's only two of them, can't they just write to you and ask you how it
turns out? And if they go to AOL's webmail interface (I think it's
http://webmail.aol.com or http://mail.aol.com) it's fairly easy to send
plain text, as I understand. Adam Bailey went to a lot of work to discover
how to trick the built-in mailer of AOL 6.0 to send plain text against its
own will, but the procedure he found is far more involved than sending from
AOL webmail.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 13 18:07:16 2001
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To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
In-reply-to: <004601c12457$8ba0a400$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 17:55:13 -0700
From: Michelle Dick
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"David W. Tamkin" wrote:
> Michelle has followed up,
>
> D> The reason I asked is that I have two AOL 6.0 subscribers
> D> who are making a good faith effort to figure out how to send
> D> plain text.
>
> If it's only two of them, can't they just write to you and ask you how it
> turns out?
It's two now. Who happen to write to me because I've been posting to
my list under admin capacity. They were polite, I was in a good mood,
so I have been helping. They alerted me to the problem. But there
will be others, and I'm sure there are some that don't want to bother
the list owner, but would interested in working it out on their own if
they were given pointers to resources to do so in the bounce they got
back telling them their post wasn't plain text. I fall behind in
email quite often. If folks have the tools to figure things out they
don't get so upset if I don't respond in reasonable time. :-)
--
Michelle Dick
artemis@rahul.net
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 14 00:04:53 2001
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To: Michelle Dick
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
In-Reply-To: Message from Michelle Dick
of "Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:51:10 PDT." <20010813225110.765AE7C07@yellow.rahul.net>
References: <20010813225110.765AE7C07@yellow.rahul.net>
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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 23:34:16 -0700
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From: J C Lawrence
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On Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:51:10 -0700
Michelle Dick wrote:
> FWIW, I'm the original poster and none of the respondents came
> across to me as believing that demime is the only solution.
I've come to prefer mimefilter:
Its simpler
Its faster
Its lighter weight
Its easier/simpler to configure
Oh yeah, and it has a Debian/Linux package and the author appears
semi-regularly on the Mailman lists.
ObNote: Oy heah, its also less featured, but in ways I didn't and
don't care about.
--
J C Lawrence )\._.,--....,'``.
---------(*) /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
claw@kanga.nu `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 14 12:18:00 2001
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Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:32:22 -0400
To: Michelle Dick
From: Nick Simicich
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <20010813211712.CF35E7C07@yellow.rahul.net>
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At 02:17 PM 8/13/2001 -0700, Michelle Dick wrote:
>I did look into demime in the past, can't recall why I didn't use it
>(maybe my perl is too old on the mailing list server?). I will take
>another look. But, I plan to switch to Mailman in the near future and
>while I see there is demime patch, there is not one for the latest
>version of Mailman (or wasn't when I checked). I don't know python
>yet. In my case, I am not at all cpu-limited on the mailing list
>server, far from it.
demime's defaults egarding the Unix format "^From " line have changed such
that a patch is no longer necessary.
--
We will fight for bovine freedom, And hold our large heads high.
We will run free, with the buffalo or die! Cows with Guns.
- Dana Lyons, Cows With Guns
Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 14 12:33:17 2001
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Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:36:46 -0400
To: Charlie Summers
From: Nick Simicich
Subject: Re: wanted: web-based plain-text email checker
Cc: "John R Levine" ,
"Roger B.A. Klorese" ,
List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
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At 05:51 PM 8/13/2001 -0400, Charlie Summers wrote:
> I will make no additional comment on this subject and allow all of you who
>believe using demime is the only solution for everyone to have the last
>word(s).
I finally wrote demime when I ran into someone whose mail gateway was
converting their plain text postings back into multipart mime so as to
attach a disclaimer (is dis my claimer?) in a separate text section. It
was at that point that I finally gave up on simply all but bouncing plain
text postings.
I believe that AOL 6.0 is another example of same - yes, I have read how
you can send text/plain with it, but it seems to be easier to just filter.
--
We will fight for bovine freedom, And hold our large heads high.
We will run free, with the buffalo or die! Cows with Guns.
- Dana Lyons, Cows With Guns
Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 14 13:18:41 2001
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Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:52:38 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: mimefilter vs demime
Message-ID: <89965468.997804358@t283742ghzz>
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Mimefilter is good too, it is lightweight. I installed and played with
both and eventually went with demime because (a) it is more agressive in
terms of yielding just plain text - it doesn't "respect" multipart/mixed
and try to preserve it with just selective pruning, it flattens it; and (b)
if the poster sends ONLY HTML with no plain text (a sad feature of a couple
of mailers), demime does a quick&dirty text render.
For other applications not involving human readable mailing lists, I would
probably prefer mimefilter.
Another popular solution is Stripmime.
http://www.phred.org/~alex/stripmime.html
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 15 11:22:38 2001
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From: nolan@celery.tssi.com
Subject: 'Hitler Rule'
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers)
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 13:05:33 -0500 (CDT)
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Can someone please direct me to the origin of the 'Hitler Rule'?
--
Mike Nolan
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 15 12:37:40 2001
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Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 02:04:35 -0700
From: "Michael C. Berch"
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To: List Managers
Cc: nolan@celery.tssi.com
Subject: Re: 'Hitler Rule'
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nolan@celery.tssi.com wrote:
>
> Can someone please direct me to the origin of the 'Hitler Rule'?
Not sure if this is what you mean, but the following search on Google
will tell you more than you probably want to know:
http://www.google.com/search?q=godwin%27s+law
I don't know the original date or newsgroup on which Godwin's Law was
originally posted, but it's probably buried in there somewhere.
--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@postmodern.com
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 15 13:52:45 2001
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<3B7ACC81.8C8553C9@postmodern.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 15:46:52 -0500
To: "Michael C. Berch" ,
List Managers
From: "Fred Terry"
Subject: Re: 'Hitler Rule'
Cc: nolan@celery.tssi.com
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At 2:04 AM -0700 8/15/01, Michael C. Berch wrote:
>nolan@celery.tssi.com wrote:
>>
>> Can someone please direct me to the origin of the 'Hitler Rule'?
>
>Not sure if this is what you mean, but the following search on Google
>will tell you more than you probably want to know:
>
>http://www.google.com/search?q=godwin%27s+law
>
>I don't know the original date or newsgroup on which Godwin's Law was
>originally posted, but it's probably buried in there somewhere.
You can also check the jargon file...
http://tuxedo.org/jargon/jargon.html
for Godwin's Law:
>[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
>comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition
>in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever
>mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in
>progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an
>upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a
>widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law
>in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
pf
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 15 17:51:27 2001
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Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 17:10:15 -0400
To: nolan@celery.tssi.com
From: Nick Simicich
Subject: Re: 'Hitler Rule'
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers)
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At 01:05 PM 8/15/2001 -0500, nolan@celery.tssi.com wrote:
>Can someone please direct me to the origin of the 'Hitler Rule'?
Is that the one where, as soon as you compare someone or something to the
Nazis or Hitler you have lost the argument?
If som I've been on Usenet since 1986 and it was ancient folklore already.
--
We will fight for bovine freedom, And hold our large heads high.
We will run free, with the buffalo or die! Cows with Guns.
- Dana Lyons, Cows With Guns
Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 17 03:39:19 2001
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It's formally referred to as Godwin's Law.
From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 17 11:56:42 2001
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Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 14:41:59 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: poster intensive
Message-ID: <1626906658.998059319@[192.168.0.5]>
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We've mostly gone on, but in reviewing this week's posts I noticed one
thing from David that I want to respond to:
"David W. Tamkin" wrote:
> Unless the poster is on a setup (such as AOL 6.0) that pushes HTML mail
> onto customers with all the selections preset, I've found that plain text
> is *less* poster-intensive. The writer doesn't have to pick out
> stationery, typefaces, colors, borders, type sizes, emphasis styles, and
> all those other things that would leave me scratching my head for what to
> choose if I couldn't send plain text.
Yes, plain text is much easier than hand-composed HTML/rich text, which is
why we smart folks are using plain text here :) however, today's "rich
mailers" - not just AOL but Outlook Express, newer flavors of Eudora, etc -
tend to offer customizable 'stationery' preferences, so that the simplest
'yeah me too!' reply posting, which took the member 3 seconds to write and
send, still arrives trying to look like rainbow Old English text on a
background of purple flowers. That's why, when you choose the Sisyphean
approach of "re-educating" your members, many of them don't even know they
WERE sending HTML, let alone why they should change, and nevermind how.
Or there's things like the dread Javamail, which (as installed on some mail
services) insists on building even one "hi there" line of plain text into a
multipart/mixed bundle containing a single text/plain subcomponent. Yecch!
and the user has no control. Filter and forget, sez i. (Actually I think
I had to extend demime to handle that occurrence, it's been a while.)
From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 17 14:54:19 2001
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References: <1626906658.998059319@[192.168.0.5]>
Subject: Re: poster intensive
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 16:39:11 -0500
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| Yes, plain text is much easier than hand-composed HTML/rich text, which is
| why we smart folks are using plain text here :)
What I was speaking of, Tom, was not the effort of typing the markup from
scratch -- which the sender isn't doing -- but rather that of selecting the
effects (the MUA's composition routines would then insert the requisite
markup for them). Users of mailers with default markup settings, of course,
don't have any idea of what they're sending.
From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 17 16:39:30 2001
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Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 19:14:59 -0400
To: Tom Neff
From: Nick Simicich
Subject: Re: poster intensive
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <1626906658.998059319@[192.168.0.5]>
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At 02:41 PM 8/17/2001 -0400, Tom Neff wrote:
>and the user has no control. Filter and forget, sez i. (Actually I think
>I had to extend demime to handle that occurrence, it's been a while.)
Did you send me the file for my testcase list?
--
We will fight for bovine freedom, And hold our large heads high.
We will run free, with the buffalo or die! Cows with Guns.
- Dana Lyons, Cows With Guns
Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 18 06:55:44 2001
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Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 09:42:58 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: poster intensive; disaster du jour
Message-ID: <1695365688.998127778@[192.168.0.5]>
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"David W. Tamkin" wrote:
> | Yes, plain text is much easier than hand-composed HTML/rich text, which
> | is why we smart folks are using plain text here :)
>
> What I was speaking of, Tom, was not the effort of typing the markup from
> scratch -- which the sender isn't doing -- but rather that of selecting
> the effects (the MUA's composition routines would then insert the
> requisite markup for them). Users of mailers with default markup
> settings, of course, don't have any idea of what they're sending.
Right, and what I was speaking of was the kind of HTML/rich message markup
that the average list manager actually encounters most of the time, i.e.,
inadvertent or automatic markup.
There is an inversion of "poster intensiveness" depending on the kind of
client software in use. If one's mail application defaults to plain text
unless prodded to do otherwise, then it is less poster intensive to go with
the flow (as I am doing here with Mulberry) and stay in plain text, rather
than tweaking various settings and forcing fonts and stuff.
If, on the other hand, one's mail client is like AOL6, which arbitrarily
switches to HTML in response to a huge number of rather non-intuitive
things (pasting a URL into the text will often do it, for example), or
Outlook Express, which encourages you to have a 'personal decor' for your
correspondence, then it is more "poster intensive" to have to keep around
little Post-Its with six part instruction sequences for plain-text-izing
your messages to avoid the wrath of that curmudgeon at JEEPSALES-L, than it
is to just write and send like you do with everyone else.
Anyway, that's well ground-driven so...
By the way, if you want the textbook example of a list management DISASTER,
consider the case of the Cinestream forums at Media100.com . For years
they had been running an NNTP server in-house that let you read and post to
dedicated newsgroups for their fancy digital video editing software; or you
could get a daily listserv index, or a digest, or individual messages. The
traffic was pretty high so most people apparently either took the index or
read the newsgroup. So this week, for internal management reasons, they
got rid of the NNTP server, and moved everyone onto a new Listserv machine.
In the process they simply took ALL the addresses that had been registered
in any form, and dumped them all into the single-message bounce mailing
list! It took about six hours before the approx. 2,000 member list was in
a full screaming "r*move me dammit!!!" bounce storm. A full day after the
switch, some befuddled engineer from the company finally posted saying
"Sorry - we're working on it!!" I don't know for sure but I suspect that
they lost their list/nntp "guru" and are learning from scratch. I thought
of the happy fraternity here while watching the carnage...
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 18 09:06:13 2001
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References: <1695365688.998127778@[192.168.0.5]>
Subject: Re: the need for post-its (was poster intensive)
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 10:34:17 -0500
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Tom Neff wrote,
| If, on the other hand, one's mail client is like AOL6, which arbitrarily
| switches to HTML in response to a huge number of rather non-intuitive
| things (pasting a URL into the text will often do it, for example), or
| Outlook Express, which encourages you to have a 'personal decor' for your
| correspondence, then it is more "poster intensive" to have to keep around
| little Post-Its with six part instruction sequences for plain-text-izing
| your messages.
True of AOL 6.0 (worse than you say, in fact, Tom) but not true of Outlook
Express.
As I understand about AOL 6.0, there's no arbitrary switching; there's no
switching at all. It always forces HTML and doesn't need a rationalization
like finding a URL in the text. To prevent it you go through the
configuration procedure to permit plain text and then, on each outgoing
message, through further steps to evade markup. So AOL 6.0 is worse than
you describe.
However, Outlook Express can be set once and for all to send plain text
except on messages where the sender specifically selects rich text or adds
an attachment or stationery. It can also be set to include forwarded
messages as text rather than attaching them. Once the user sets those
options, all outgoing messages are in plain text with no extra steps that
have to be redone on each mailing. There's no need to keep post-its around.
OE is not nearly so bad as you describe. (It's no paradise either, but I've
yet to find anything better for my uses.)
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 18 13:36:57 2001
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Message-ID:
From: "John R Levine"
To: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: "List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM"
Subject: Re: the need for post-its (was poster intensive)
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> As I understand about AOL 6.0, there's no arbitrary switching; there's no
> switching at all. It always forces HTML and doesn't need a rationalization
> like finding a URL in the text.
Not exactly, but it'll certainly switch to HTML for reasons that are not
obvious to people sending mail.
> However, Outlook Express can be set once and for all to send plain text
> except on messages where the sender specifically selects rich text or adds
> an attachment or stationery.
That's mostly true, although I have had lots of multipart/crud mail show
up from people who swear they set all their Outlook or OE settings to
plain text. As far as I can tell, there's also a setting in Exchange
(Microsoft's mail server) that will crudify mail whether you want it or
not.
My advice for people using AOL is to install Netscape 6.1. It's a much
nicer mail program than the one built into AOL and is much less
enthusiastic about HTML.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
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From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 18 21:07:11 2001
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References:
Subject: Re: the need for post-its (was poster intensive)
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 22:52:44 -0500
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When I wrote,
T > However, Outlook Express can be set once and for all to send plain text
T> except on messages where the sender specifically selects rich text or
T> adds an attachment or stationery.
John Levine replied,
L> That's mostly true, although I have had lots of multipart/crud mail show
L> up from people who swear they set all their Outlook or OE settings to
L> plain text.
It's entirely true, but there are several settings that have to be changed
from their defaults. Likely they didn't get them all. For example, there
is one for sending replies in the same rich/plain selection as the message
being answered, which overrides the basic rich/plain selection. If you
change the latter to plain text but leave the former at imitating the
message you're answering, you'll answer HTML with HTML.
L> My advice for people using AOL is to install Netscape 6.1. It's a much
L> nicer mail program than the one built into AOL and is much less
L> enthusiastic about HTML.
Does Netscape have some special hook into AOL mail (it might, just as OE
does for Hotmail), or is there some other email provider to whom you refer
them?
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 18 21:37:24 2001
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Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 21:25:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
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I've started to put together a document geared toward the admins of sites
which use or encourage the use of list unfriendly auto-responders.
Every time I get an "out of office" message in response to a list posting,
I send a note saying that the auto-responder is broken and now a URL of my
document
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/auto-resp/
If people on this list know of similar (and particularly more complete)
documents of a similar nature, let me know.
Although the practice isn't so common any more, I also have a document for
sites using those MTAs which send non-delivery reports to header From
instead of envelope FROM. That document lives at
http://www.goldmark.org/email/badbounce.html
-j
--
Jeffrey Goldberg
I have recently moved, see http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/contact.html
Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 18 23:22:02 2001
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Subject: Re: the need for post-its (was poster intensive)
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 01:12:22 -0500
x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998
From: Adam Bailey
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On 8/18/01 3:21 PM, John R Levine wrote...
>> As I understand about AOL 6.0, there's no arbitrary switching; there's no
>> switching at all. It always forces HTML and doesn't need a rationalization
>> like finding a URL in the text.
>
>Not exactly, but it'll certainly switch to HTML for reasons that are not
>obvious to people sending mail.
Are you aware of something that I am not?
AOL 6 always sends in HTML, unless you explicitly disable after composing
a message. The only way to avoid that is to have nothing in the message
body.
--
Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois
adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP
adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 06:38:25 2001
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 09:30:00 -0400
From: Tom Neff
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
Message-ID: <1780988168.998213400@[192.168.0.5]>
In-Reply-To: <200108190800.BAA14794@honor.greatcircle.com>
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As I recall (although I have no desire to reinstall it and check!) if you
leave your default settings at Courier 10 or whatever they bless, and you
do nothing except press the keys H,I,space,M,O,M and hit Send, it will go
as plain text. The minute you do almost anything else, it will switch to
HTML. Even if you reset all the font/graphics for a message (the standard
way to try and send plain text message by message) you will still get HTML
if you have quoted text, URL's etc. Ironically, as I think has been
pointed out already in this thread, AOL's Web mail interface allows plain
text sending much more easily.
David missed my point about Outlook Express. Of course it CAN be reliably
set to send plain text, in fact when captured in enemy territory (like an
in-law's PC :)) I am glad it's preinstalled for my temporary use that way.
However, real users in the real world tend to end up LIKING the formatted
stuff, and they use it when communicating with each other, and don't
necessarily remember to, or want to, switch in and out of "dumb text mode"
just for your list. If your list is in their address book they can specify
plain text, but if they're just replying out of a spool they may not have
preferences imposed.
In doing some side research on this question I found dozens of lists
bemoaning the AOL thing on line in various forms. You would think that
they would take the hint, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 09:08:34 2001
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References: <1780988168.998213400@[192.168.0.5]>
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 10:47:47 -0500
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| David missed my point about Outlook Express.
I wasn't shooting at it, Tom.
| Of course it CAN be reliably set to send plain text,
John's and my point was that quite a few people who think they've managed to
set it that way have not. That neither misses nor contradicts yours.
| in fact when captured in enemy territory (like an in-law's PC :))
By that definition my PC must be enemy territory as well, yet OE thrives
here.
| However, real users in the real world tend to end up LIKING the formatted
| stuff ...
(Nice of you to call yourself and me imaginary.) I find that only a handful
of users actually like it; rather, most don't even realize it's there or
that it needn't be. That's why they don't know that there's anything
different about it, much less that there are downsides to the differences.
I've even played off that ignorance: someone writes to me in a tiny or
too-fancy font or sets foreground and background colors that are barely
distinguishable from one another, and I write back that my old eyes couldn't
make out the message and ask them to re-send it in plain text. They don't
know that I could easily view the source and read it that way (and probably
already have). This particular group, though, do realize that they had made
selections, because no mail client's defaults are that illegible.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 09:38:28 2001
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From: "John N Levine"
To: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
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Subject: Re: AOL mail and netscape
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David W. Tamkin wrote:
> When I wrote,
>
> T > However, Outlook Express can be set once and for all to send plain text
> T> except on messages where the sender specifically selects rich text or
> T> adds an attachment or stationery.
>
> John Levine replied,
>
> L> That's mostly true, although I have had lots of multipart/crud mail show
> L> up from people who swear they set all their Outlook or OE settings to
> L> plain text.
>
> It's entirely true, but there are several settings that have to be changed
> from their defaults. Likely they didn't get them all. For example, there
> is one for sending replies in the same rich/plain selection as the message
> being answered, which overrides the basic rich/plain selection. If you
> L> My advice for people using AOL is to install Netscape 6.1.
>
> Does Netscape have some special hook into AOL mail (it might, just as OE
> does for Hotmail), or is there some other email provider to whom you refer
> them?
AOL owns Netscape, remember? In Netscape 6, one of the options when
you're setting up your mail account is to use your AOL account. It
looks to me like technically it's nothing special, it's just an IMAP
server that's accessible within AOL's network. It's quite possible that
any other IMAP client such as Eudora or OE would work.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer
Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36
A3 47
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 10:08:30 2001
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Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 11:52:14 -0500
x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998
From: Adam Bailey
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On 8/19/01 8:30 AM, Tom Neff wrote...
>As I recall (although I have no desire to reinstall it and check!) if you
>leave your default settings at Courier 10 or whatever they bless, and you
>do nothing except press the keys H,I,space,M,O,M and hit Send, it will go
>as plain text.
No, that's not the case. The moment you type anything, even a space,
you're creating FONT tags.
--
Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois
adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP
adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 11:08:27 2001
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References: <008501c12862$82f22d60$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net> <3B7FE7EE.1060107@iecc.com>
Subject: Re: AOL mail and netscape
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 12:50:54 -0500
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John Levine wrote,
| AOL owns Netscape ...
No kidding. That's why I asked whether the two might work together in some
special way; you're replying as if the corporate relationship made it a lock
that they would. You know as well as I do, John, how risky it is to assume
that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing in any large business,
more so between separate franchises within a conglomerate. AOLTW is very
far from presenting a counterexample.
AOL's owning Netscape is no grounds to assume that the two products have a
special interface; it is grounds only to be less surprised if it turns out
that they do than if MSN and Eudora did or Earthlink and Pegasus did.
| ... remember?
Can anybody forget? Tomorrow Heartland Music is going to get a piece of my
mind for messing up my CD order, and believe me I'll say something
connecting the trouble to their corporate parent. I'm well aware of who
they are.
| In Netscape 6, one of the options when
| you're setting up your mail account is to use your AOL account. It
| looks to me like technically it's nothing special, it's just an IMAP
| server that's accessible within AOL's network.
Thank you. So it puts a person into a comparable position to an OE user:
having to change the client's initial settings once to get it to send plain
text thereafter without prompting. If that's the case, at least there
shouldn't be any steps that need to be redone for every outgoing message --
no need for post-its, as you described it before. But there still would be
that first reconfiguration to do, unlike AOL webmail, which just happily
sends plain text. (Without an AOL account I can't test any of this for
myself.)
My guess is that, if someone has never used an email client except AOL's, it
would be easier to instruct such a person how to use AOL webmail than
Netscape's mail client.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 11:22:10 2001
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 11:05:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Roger B.A. Klorese"
To: Tom Neff
Cc:
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
In-Reply-To: <1780988168.998213400@[192.168.0.5]>
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On Sun, 19 Aug 2001, Tom Neff wrote:
> As I recall (although I have no desire to reinstall it and check!) if you
> leave your default settings at Courier 10 or whatever they bless, and you
> do nothing except press the keys H,I,space,M,O,M and hit Send, it will go
> as plain text.
Nope. It still sends multipart/alternative.
--
ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG
PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114
"Go without hate. But not without rage. Heal the world." -- Paul Monette
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 12:10:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Roger B.A. Klorese"
To: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc:
Subject: Re: AOL mail and netscape
In-Reply-To: <006c01c128d8$5783ffc0$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
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On Sun, 19 Aug 2001, David W. Tamkin wrote:
> My guess is that, if someone has never used an email client except AOL's, it
> would be easier to instruct such a person how to use AOL webmail than
> Netscape's mail client.
My guess is that "instruct" is rarely an option. I can't get AOL users to
use webmail, let alone Netscape. A few of the smarter ones use webmail,
but only if they're roaming. In general, they'll only use the AOL native
client, "because that's how email works." And they don't want junk like
filters, either... they want subject prefixes so they can tell what to
open and what to delete. *sigh*
--
ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG
PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114
"Go without hate. But not without rage. Heal the world." -- Paul Monette
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 12:37:10 2001
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 15:12:35 -0400
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Sharon Tucci
Subject: List owner woes - an fyi
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This might be an obvious one for most people on
the list, but it was hard for me to figure it out.
It's more of an FYI to possibly save some of you
some grief :)
We've had a few list owners who have suddenly
had problems with sending commands to their list
via email.
We couldn't figure out what was causing the problem.
Text was turned on, appropriate font used, etc.
Problem ended up being using an anti-virus program
that scans OUTGOING email. Even though there were
no visible changes to the email itself, the mail
ended up being sent as MIME (and showed as such
in the mail header).
Sharon Tucci
http://www.ListHost.net
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 12:52:18 2001
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To: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
In-Reply-To: Message from "David W. Tamkin"
of "Sun, 19 Aug 2001 10:47:47 CDT." <004901c128c6$f56299c0$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
References: <1780988168.998213400@[192.168.0.5]> <004901c128c6$f56299c0$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 12:22:29 -0700
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From: J C Lawrence
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On Sun, 19 Aug 2001 10:47:47 -0500
David W Tamkin wrote:
> I find that only a handful of users actually like it; rather, most
> don't even realize it's there or that it needn't be.
I've run into several now that know full well the difference between
text/plain and text/html for email, and strongly prefer text/html.
(In fact they gripe at me for sending only text/plain). The root of
their complaint is that they don't like the narrow fixed margins I
set on my email that don't resize with their MUA window, and they
don't like the lack of colours. They say it looks boring, and
staid, and static. They then consider me a deranged alien when I
reply that the facts that it is plain, staid, and static are major
advantages of the format.
--
J C Lawrence )\._.,--....,'``.
---------(*) /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
claw@kanga.nu `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 13:36:00 2001
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Message-ID:
From: "John R Levine"
To: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: "List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM"
Subject: Re: AOL mail and netscape
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> | In Netscape 6, one of the options when
> | you're setting up your mail account is to use your AOL account.
> Thank you. So it puts a person into a comparable position to an OE user:
> having to change the client's initial settings once to get it to send plain
> text thereafter without prompting.
It's a little better than that, since Netscape's initial settings are more
reasonable.
> My guess is that, if someone has never used an email client except AOL's, it
> would be easier to instruct such a person how to use AOL webmail than
> Netscape's mail client.
It's about the same--for some reason you can't use AOL's webmail with the
copy of IE that's built into the AOL client. You have to run some other
web browser (even IE) separately, although you can do it while you're
connectd to AOL.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
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Subject: Re: AOL mail and netscape
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 16:01:09 -0500
x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998
From: Adam Bailey
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On 8/19/01 11:23 AM, John N Levine wrote...
> David W. Tamkin wrote:
-snip-
>> Does Netscape have some special hook into AOL mail (it might, just as OE
>> does for Hotmail), or is there some other email provider to whom you refer
>> them?
>
> AOL owns Netscape, remember? In Netscape 6, one of the options when
> you're setting up your mail account is to use your AOL account. It
> looks to me like technically it's nothing special, it's just an IMAP
> server that's accessible within AOL's network. It's quite possible that
> any other IMAP client such as Eudora or OE would work.
No. The IMAP servers use a proprietary authentication scheme and special
X-AOL IMAP commands.
All of this, as well as the HTML issue, is well documented in my AOL
Email FAQ (http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/).
--
Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois
adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP
adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 14:50:47 2001
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From: "Bernie Cosell"
Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 17:40:03 -0400
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Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
References: Message from "David W. Tamkin" of "Sun, 19 Aug 2001 10:47:47 CDT." <004901c128c6$f56299c0$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net>
In-reply-to: <22063.998248949@kanga.nu>
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> I've run into several now that know full well the difference between
> text/plain and text/html for email, and strongly prefer text/html.
> (In fact they gripe at me for sending only text/plain). ...
I've mentioned this before but it appears to be a bit of history that
some of us would like to ignore: There has been a *GENERAL* un-
satisfaction with "plain text" email for virtually as long as there has
been email. There have been at least a dozen schemes over the years
[probably more] for doing one flavor or another of 'enhanced' email. It
was just a matter of time before one scheme had all the right pieces in
place. We don't have plain-text email because it is *right*, but only
because the email-world-at-large hadn't managed to settle on a standard
for something better, and not for lack of trying or for lack of users
wanting it.
"normal folk" [perhaps even many of you] use 'fancy' text for essentially
everything _else_ they do, from memos and notes to letters [both personal
and business], quicken charts, spreadheet annotations, IM clients, etc.
Web pages in plain-text are a real anomaly. Altogether 'plain text' is
really a relic of what almost everyone considers to be a bygone era.
My point is that I think *WE'RE*WRONG* -- the view that the desire to
have nicely formatted email, in a readable font employing normal
typesetting conventions, is somehow anomalous and/or that the folk who
want/expect such a thing are terminally unclued is _off_the_mark_. It is
*WE* who are shovelling against the tide, trying to make sure that it
stays 1970 forever.
Now, I'm a *staunch* hater of HTML in general and HTML-email in
particular, but the fact is that it appears to be the survivor. It is
one of the worst choices for exhanced-email of the dozen or so I'm
familiar with, but these things aren't chosen for technical merit. That
'HTML' ended up being the format-of-choice for nicely-formatted-mail is
[IMO] unfortunate, but that *SOMETHING* would come along an become the
defacto 'fancy email standard' it is a situation that was inevitable --
there has *ALWAYS* been a push for enhanced email [you old timers know
that perfectly well].
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 16:51:39 -0700 (PDT)
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From: "David W. Tamkin"
To:
References:
Subject: Re: AOL mail and netscape
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:49:42 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
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charset="iso-8859-1"
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When I wrote,
T> My guess is that, if someone has never used an email client except AOL's,
T> it would be easier to instruct such a person how to use AOL webmail than
T> Netscape's mail client.
I was writing under the premise of a willing tutee. Nonetheless Roger
responded,
K> My guess is that "instruct" is rarely an option. I can't get AOL users
K> to use webmail, let alone Netscape. ... In general, they'll only use
K> the AOL native client, "because that's how email works."
Please understand that in a comparison of the cooking times of beef recipes,
"I know many vegetarians, who won't eat dead cow no matter how quickly it
cooks" is a separate issue and it does not invalidate a statement about
which would get done sooner.
But if you like it better, Stoney, amend the offending word "easier" to
"microscopically less sisyphian."
K> And they don't want junk like
K> filters, either... they want subject prefixes so they can tell what to
K> open and what to delete. *sigh*
On the last (in both senses) list that I ran, I offered subject tags as an
option, rather to the frustration of those who wanted to force their
preference on all members' copies of all posts. In the six years of that
list's lifespan, only one person requested the option as such; all the
others in that mode got there by proposing that tagging be the law of the
list. [I also had to argue the initial group who demanded tags down from
eleven characters to four.] A couple of them were seriously upset when I
said that they could have tags but that untagged subjects would remain the
default; they had set out to impose it on the list and losing their personal
grounds for complaint took the wind out of their sails. Still, I remember
an incident where a member had the setting he wanted (not regarding tags but
something else) -- it was the default, in fact -- but he kept objecting
because I continued to give other members a choice instead of making
everyone toe his line; he truly felt that the other way was morally wrong.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 17:20:48 2001
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 19:51:06 -0400
From: Philip Busey
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To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
References: Message from "David W. Tamkin" of "Sun, 19 Aug 2001 10:47:47 CDT." <004901c128c6$f56299c0$fb080142@cpe6618251.il.sprintbbd.net> <200108192140.f7JLe8W09396@mail.rev.net>
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The fact that plain text even survives as a "relic" from 1970 is a testimony
to the fact that it is still readable, as it will be 100 years from now.
Not so the fancy text.
I have used a series of word processors from Wordstar 3.0 to WordPerfect to
Word, and before that the PDP editor, and other things in between.
Occasionally I go back to 1980s manuscripts and even 1970s data, and I can
still extract and export useful information, for example, if I've hung on to
an old copy of WordStar and have DOS-based computer. But file format
conversions are time consuming, and not guaranteed into the future.
(Likewise, storage technology is subject to obsolescence.) Text lives on.
I would not justify fancy text for e-mail just because we use it for paper
correspondence. This example vindicates text and proves the frailty of
fancy text. If I have to refer back to a letter or try to reuse snippets
from a manuscript that I wrote even five years ago, there's a good chance
that I was using a different word processor and may waste half an afternoon
figuring out how to export or convert. As an example of a useful project, I
am trying to categorize the frequently asked questions in my field of
expertise, which will eventually will be added to a database. For this
purpose, text is a far superior resource than HTML.
If fancy text were being used to convey the message, I would understand.
But the basic goals of readability and communication for most correspondence
are covered suitably by text. The reader can change the read preferences to
what ever kind of background and text is easy on the eyes, and the column
width problem mentioned by J C Lawrence need not necessarily be a problem,
if the sender chooses not to wrap the lines.
Phil
http://earthfire.com
Bernie Cosell wrote:
>
> > I've run into several now that know full well the difference between
> > text/plain and text/html for email, and strongly prefer text/html.
> > (In fact they gripe at me for sending only text/plain). ...
>
> I've mentioned this before but it appears to be a bit of history that
> some of us would like to ignore: There has been a *GENERAL* un-
> satisfaction with "plain text" email for virtually as long as there has
> been email. There have been at least a dozen schemes over the years
> [probably more] for doing one flavor or another of 'enhanced' email. It
> was just a matter of time before one scheme had all the right pieces in
> place. We don't have plain-text email because it is *right*, but only
> because the email-world-at-large hadn't managed to settle on a standard
> for something better, and not for lack of trying or for lack of users
> wanting it.
>
> "normal folk" [perhaps even many of you] use 'fancy' text for essentially
> everything _else_ they do, from memos and notes to letters [both personal
> and business], quicken charts, spreadheet annotations, IM clients, etc.
> Web pages in plain-text are a real anomaly. Altogether 'plain text' is
> really a relic of what almost everyone considers to be a bygone era.
>
> My point is that I think *WE'RE*WRONG* -- the view that the desire to
> have nicely formatted email, in a readable font employing normal
> typesetting conventions, is somehow anomalous and/or that the folk who
> want/expect such a thing are terminally unclued is _off_the_mark_. It is
> *WE* who are shovelling against the tide, trying to make sure that it
> stays 1970 forever.
>
> Now, I'm a *staunch* hater of HTML in general and HTML-email in
> particular, but the fact is that it appears to be the survivor. It is
> one of the worst choices for exhanced-email of the dozen or so I'm
> familiar with, but these things aren't chosen for technical merit. That
> 'HTML' ended up being the format-of-choice for nicely-formatted-mail is
> [IMO] unfortunate, but that *SOMETHING* would come along an become the
> defacto 'fancy email standard' it is a situation that was inevitable --
> there has *ALWAYS* been a push for enhanced email [you old timers know
> that perfectly well].
>
> /Bernie\
>
> --
> Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
> mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
> --> Too many people, too few sheep ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 17:20:19 -0700 (PDT)
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 20:03:48 -0400
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Nick Simicich
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
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At 05:40 PM 8/19/2001 -0400, Bernie Cosell wrote:
>My point is that I think *WE'RE*WRONG* -- the view that the desire to
>have nicely formatted email, in a readable font employing normal
>typesetting conventions, is somehow anomalous and/or that the folk who
>want/expect such a thing are terminally unclued is _off_the_mark_.
I agree that this is exactly the right thing to do. Unfortunately, I think
that you probably have no idea of what my vision, screen, or monitor
resolution is like. Therefore, it is terminally stupid for you to select
fonts and colors that look good on your screem, to you, and then impose
them on me, and any mail system that allows you to do this to all of the
recipients of a mailing list is terminally broken.
What today's html mail does is not what you want. I have set fonts,
colors, and sizes that work for me. Html mail might arrive spread all over
my screen, or, more often than not, it arrives in a tiny font with
background colors that make it unreadable to me, unless I get my reading
glasses out, which I normally do not wear while using a computer.
What might be fine for communications among consenting adults is terminally
broken when it is scaled to the mailing list environment. IMHO, it only
takes one visually impaired mailing list recipient to make forwarding
formatted mail a bad idea.
--
We will fight for bovine freedom, And hold our large heads high.
We will run free, with the buffalo or die! Cows with Guns.
- Dana Lyons, Cows With Guns
Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
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Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 21:04:27 -0500
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Nick replied to Bernie,
S> ... you probably have no idea of what my vision, screen, or monitor
S> resolution is like. Therefore, it is terminally stupid for you to select
S> fonts and colors that look good on your screem, to you, and then impose
S> them on me, and any mail system that allows you to do this to all of the
S> recipients of a mailing list is terminally broken.
["On your screem" ... that's priceless, as if to say that plain text is for
discourse, rich text for hysteria.]
S> I have set fonts, colors,
S> and sizes that work for me. Html mail might arrive spread all over
S> my screen, or, more often than not, it arrives in a tiny font with
S> background colors that make it unreadable to me, unless I get my reading
S> glasses out, which I normally do not wear while using a computer.
Likewise Phil wrote about plain text,
B> The reader can change the read preferences to
B> what ever kind of background and text is easy on the eyes, and the column
B> width problem mentioned by J C Lawrence need not necessarily be a
B> problem, if the sender chooses not to wrap the lines.
That's what is nice about flowed format (except for its conflict with the
classic signature separator): it delineates where the sender wants the text
presented exactly as sent and where the recipient (or the recipient's
software) is welcome to reformat it to taste. Not so for HTML.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 20:50:48 2001
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Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 20:48:51 -0700
Subject: Re: aol6 vs Outlook Express
From: Chuq Von Rospach
To: Philip Busey ,
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On 8/19/01 4:51 PM, "Philip Busey" wrote:
> The fact that plain text even survives as a "relic" from 1970 is a testim=
ony
> to the fact that it is still readable, as it will be 100 years from now.
This part I agree with.
> Not so the fancy text.
This part, however, I can't. If you honestly think that HTML won't be
readable, or as readable, as plain text, given how endemic the form has
become, then I think you need to think it through again.
And -- heck -- what's "plain text", anyway? What we call "plain text" works
fine for US english and to a lesser extent with western european languages,
but fails miserably for non-roman languages and asian languages. So are we
calling "plain text" straight 7 bit ascii? If so, how do you reconcile all
of people who've been disenfranchised from using it? After all, the net
isn't a techie enclave of US and english-native nerds in universities any
more.=20
Or are you expanding plain text to include unicode or some other encoding
format? If so, it's not plain text any more.
> I would not justify fancy text for e-mail just because we use it for pape=
r
> correspondence. =20
In your opinion. This is a generational thing -- and in the paragraph I
edited out, you prove which generation you belong to. And it includes the
assumed "it was good enough for me, it's good enough for them".
Unfortunately, when you talk to "them", they tend to disagree.
This whole discussion mirrors one I've seen elsewhere -- ham radio. Plain
text is the morse code of the internet, and the parallels are almost
perfect. Early on -- that was it. You talked via morse code. Later, other
technologies showed up, but everyone was required to know morse code becaus=
e
it was the one commonality and it worked under bad transmission conditions,
os you could always "fall back" on it as a common format (for "bad
transmission conditions" read "competing technology compatibility problems"=
)
And as the technology continued to improve, morse code became less and less
relevant -- but the older hams insisted that new hams (and ham wannabees)
continued to learn morse code. This drove off a lot of potential hams
(including me). Eventually, the restrictions were loosened; later, they
started allowing "no code" licenses. Now, morse code is basically an
anachronism, and a few years ago, the last services using it gave it up and
moved on to more modern technologies -- which removes any rationalization
the hams have that morse code is still a necessary technology.
My point? A couple:
1) that text hasn't YET been replaced by some other technology means nothin=
g
about whether or not it will be down the road.
2) how you view this stuff is generational. Your parents didn't understand
rock and roll, and never saw the purpose. Your kids find rock and roll
wonderfully archaic.
3) If you hang to the "plain text is good enough" mentality, then you and
your ever shrinking group of like-thinkers will sit off in a corner as
everyone else wanders by and goes and does something else without you. In
fact, they probably already are.
Because the reality is, the newer users of the internet want styled text.
And if you tell them they don=B9t want it or need it, then most of them will
look at you like you looked at dad the first time he did the "old fogie"
schtick and nod politely and leave. They came into the internet with that
stuff; you aren't going to convince them.
If you want to be an old fogie, that's fine. But now that the technology fo=
r
styled text is here, and we have a generation of net-users who are growing
up with them, to insist on them using plain text is the same telling them t=
o
put down that 2 meter rig, shut off the repeater and pulling out the more
code paddles. They'll look at you and go find someone who supplies what the=
y
want....
--=20
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome
[ =3D =3D ]
Yes, yes, I've finally finished my home page. Lucky you.
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties
are largely ceremonial.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 19 21:05:48 2001
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To: "Bernie Cosell"